


Drowning

by direhund



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Merstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:17:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/direhund/pseuds/direhund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a tumblr request: "eridan is a merman and karkat is shipwrecked and he decides to rescue him"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning

You’re sinking. There are lights above you. You can see them glowing angry red-orange behind the bubbles of air that escape your lungs. They ripple and twist as they reach the raging surface while you sink further and further down. Heavy, unmoving. You had tried fighting your way back up, twice at least, but couldn’t make it. Your clothes, weighted with the salty water, pulled you down, and eventually your limbs burned too much to even try anymore. They had been battered by the stormy waves above you. Your body felt singed by the flames determined to consume the sea as it had the ship and most of its crew. A losing battle, especially with water coming down in sheets from the sky as well.

Suddenly the surface far, far above is lit up with a bright white light, and your half-lidded eyes catch sight of a lithe shape just above you. A dark silouettte cutting through the water like a shark, but no shark that you’ve seen before. Your eyes widen sluggishly as the light fades, followed by a muffled rumble. A mere hum from somewhere far away. The shape is gone. Perhaps a predator waiting for the last of life to leave your body. You feel so cold. Your bones are heavy like stones, coated in layers of ice. You can’t even feel your fingers or toes. You've given up, and now just wait for your aching lungs to do the same. To burst and let the water fill your mouth and themselves.

Without a warning, there are arms around your chest. It startles you, and you struggle weakly. Whoever’s got you barely feels it, and that useless wriggling cost you the last bit of air you had. The threat of drowning is suddenly much greater. A growl vibrates in the water around you, and then freezing lips have caught yours. Or maybe your lips are the ones that are freezing. Air is breathed into your lungs. You feel the beat of your rescuer’s legs in the water, propelling you upwards. It feels strange, but you don’t fight it so long as they keep breathing for you.

Suddenly the water breaks over your head. There’s an explosion of light as thunder rips up the sky and lighting tears at the angry waves. Your savior moves with them easily, bobbing like they're nothing. Your legs bump against his as you cling to him, sucking in huge lungfuls of pure, fresh air. You cough as you catch a little rainwater, but it feels amazing. You can breathe. The rush of air makes you dizzy. Your grip on him is slipping, and if he weren’t holding onto you, you would slide away from his lightly scaled skin in a few seconds. Such pretty silvery scales… Slowly, very slowly, your eyes begin to droop again. Thunder tries to break your eardrums with its deafening roar. It startles your eyes wide. Lightning illuminates your rescuer’s face for a brief moment. Such large fins… And vibrant violet eyes… Your own eyes are drooping again, but you wanted to look at his face some more. You fight it, but darkness swells around your vision until it swallows his shadowy form completely.

You’re so very cold.

 

Your face is hot. Your entire body feels sore, and also hot. Well, not your legs. Now that you focus on it, you think you can feel gentle waves lapping at them. So at least they aren’t sore and hot. Just sore.

Slowly, you crack your eyes open. The sun blinds you, shining on your delicate pupils mercilessly. Your back is cool, you notice absently. You force yourself into a sitting position, the pain a dull throbbing all over. You’ve had worse. Your mouth is dry. Your throat is burning. Your dark skin is a rosy color now. You’ve been on this beach for at least a few hours, then… Asleep? It doesn’t make sense. Why were you here in the first place? Your eyes scan over the softly sighing waves. They pull at the sand around your feet, beckoning you. Perhaps you would answer. It’s coolness would be a welcome relief from the heat. Then you remember that part of the heat stems from your damaged skin, and that the salt would only serve to worsen your misery.

A glitter of violet catches your eyes, close to the shore. A fish?

You’re siezed with a memory. Vicious, icy water pulling at you and blinding foam as strong arms hold you just above its wrath. Just enough to breathe while the sky practically breaks above you; pieces are falling. They lash at you, perhaps colder than the sea itself. He doesn’t let you go.

You come back to yourself the next moment. There’s another flash of purple. You’re about to investigate when the owner of those shiny, royal scales himself bursts elegantly from the water. Between his teeth is a glittering sliver fish. His eyes widen as he spots you, and you recognize that color.

He slowly pulls himself through the shallow water to meet you, dropping the fish on the sand. Your eyes look him over curiously, but you feel oddly calm about this. Along his back are spines, and they are currently raised in suspicion. They trail along the sides of his tail, too, a slightly lighter violet than rest of it. When he lifts it out of the water, there are more spines coming off the tip. Aside from those, he has claws and razor-sharp angler teeth. You are wary of him as he is of you.

When you make no effort to speak, he leaves the apparent gift and begins to slither back to the water, his spines laying flat again. There are gold piercings in fins that twitch.

“Wait—” Your voice cracks and sears your throat. You go into a fit of coughing. He looks back at you, a hint of concern in his face. You reach out your hand, beckoning him. He shifts to fully face you again. You realize it’s probably a chore for him to drag himself about that way, so despite the way your body screams protest, you move to meet him halfway. You practically collapse against him, and his cold skin is like an ice pack on yours, blistering as it were. Your mouth forms dry words, and your throat feels like it’s being ripped into by shark teeth as they come up, but you say them anyway: “Thank you…”

“I shoulda let ya drown. Your fuckin’ boat’s net took half a school out of our territory _while we were trackin’ it_. If it weren’t for the storm, you woulda gone back for the rest,” he growled. His voice was thick with an accent. He sounded like a sailor himself, “Planned to drown a few a ya myself; that’s the only reason I hung around.”

“So why didn’t you?” Your throat protests that sentence more than it did the last. He’s holding you like you’re something precious while you leech the chill of his body. You wonder if he realizes that. He shrugs.

“Who says I didn’t? I just thought ya were kind of nice to look at. For a human.” His voice is sort of velevety. Soft, but heavy. It could suffocate you, you think idly. You want him to keep talking.

“I think I should be angry about that,” you mumble, very quietly. You want to ask for water, if not for the fact that he might actually go fetch it for you if he were bringing you fish, and you don’t really want to leave the shivery bliss of his embrace.

“Why aren’t ya?” He has horns. Pretty, jagged orange ones that reflect the sunlight very faintly. They look smooth. You wonder how you hadn’t noticed before.

“I don’t know.” And you don’t. That kind of peeves you. They were your friends. Maybe you were too in shock. It’s been known to happen after such violent storms and sinking ships. You could even be dreaming this whole thing up. You hope not.

“You humans are so weird,” He makes a tiny glubbing sound his throat and shakes his head, then, “You need water.” You protest his letting you go, but it doesn’t help. He leaves you in water up to your waist. You wait for a very long time.

Someone finds you there. She drags you from the water, yelling for you to answer her. She's got big glasses that make her green eyes look brighter than they probably are. You're finding anything but that hard to focus on now that you've been pulled to your feet.

“Are you okay, mister!?” She asks again, panic in her voice as she helps you away from the water. The two of you are crossing the sand rather slowly. You’re not sure. Are you okay? You think you might have just vividly hallucinated being held by a merman with a funny accent. You glance back, and your heart jerks when you see him. He’s holding something. You can’t tell what it is, but you assume it was some means of carrying fresh water. You blink and he’s gone. The human is holding you, demanding that you stay awake as she supports you across the sand. Her hot skin irritates yours. You want to pull away, but can’t find the strength to do so. You’re exhausted. It’s as if the soreness in your body has increased by tenfold, and your skin feels aflame. You wonder if it wouldn’t have been easier just drowning. You glance back one last time, but he’s not there. There’s not a hint of violet on those pretty cyan waves. Your stomach twists oddly. You think you might be sick.


End file.
